Fallout 3 - Preview Previews

Dhruin

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Game Revolution tried to jump the Fallout 3 preview embargo with an early release over the weekend that has since been pulled, but Briosafreak's Fallout 3 blog got a good look at it and has a number of quotes:
The gorgeous wasteland is populated with grotesquely mutated creatures of all kinds, from giant ants intelligently attacking in waves to cannon-wielding Behemoths who charge with abandon. The frequency of combat is tuned down far below a typical First Person Shooter’s fragfest to let the game’s pacing introduce a unique sense of desolation set right into the pit of your psyche as you roam through the rubble. Just like your room!
Expect a bazillion previews from Monday on - if you're a real sucker for punishment you can read about the swag PC Gamer picked up at the press event:
A lunchbox! Mildly battered, as though it's survived a nuclear war. I'm seriously considering using it to carry my sandwiches in to the office every day.

Nuka-Cola! It will never be touched, just like the Baldur's Gate II dwarven ale that's still knocking around somewhere.

A wobbly-headed Vault Boy! Finally, a companion for wobbly-headed Lara Croft.

All of which makes me almost as happy as the fact that our new issue comes out on Thursday, stuffed to bursting with exclusive info on Fallout 3 (and SimCity Societies, but we didn't get any great swag from EA...) That's the yellow monster in the photo.
More information.
 
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Briosafreak is wrong (also unsure why he's cited again when NMA broke the news ;)), it's not Monday, it's tomorrow. From Game Revolution's frontpage:
We're in a little Pain because we weren't supposed to talk about that other game until tomorrow.
 
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When is "tomorrow"? Tomorrow is Monday for me. ;)

For me too. I think they mean the 1st of July, Matt confirmed it's "tomorrow" on the BGS forums and he's in Eastern Standard, where it's Saturday afternoon now.
 
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Hmmm --- just to let you guys know that there is previews up at IGN, Gamespot, and Worthplaying as well as Gametrailer has a nice interview with Emil P. the lead designer of Fallout :)

If you go to the General Forums at BGSF forums or hop over to No Mutants Allowed, you can 'read all about it' (to use a cliché).

/aries100
 
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Unkillable children and NPC's...mini games...leveled creatures...FPS action game...Bethesda are c***ts.
 
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Unkillable children and NPC's...mini games...leveled creatures...FPS action game...Bethesda are c***ts.

Where does it say there will be mini games?
Where does it say it has leveled creatures?
Where does it say it is a FPS?

You sure do have a potty mouth.
 
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You can read, can't you, bjon?

Here is one. I hope you are smart enough to find the rest on your own.

"To get the Protectrons up and running, you'll need to hack into one of their control terminals. Once you find one, you'll have to play a short mini-game to gain access to it. The game displays a list of possible passwords and you're given a certain number of tries to guess the correct password before you're locked out of the system. Each time you guess you'll be told how many letters of the password you selected match the letters in the correct password. If you're smart and lucky, you can narrow the field down with each guess until you arrive at the right password."
http://pc.ign.com/articles/800/800570p1.html
 
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I like Eurogamer's preview: http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=78752

I especially like this: "Oh, and that camera. You silly stalwarts can almost simulate the ridiculous angle from which the early Fallouts were shown, going into third-person, and zooming out until you're looking down on things (just like your sort tend to look down on most things)."
 
There were mini games in both Fallout 1+2 as well as Van Buren. They weren't just called mini games, but I distintcly remember hacking the console by typing in some numbers in the console to get access to a Vault or a locked door or something like that in Fallout 2.

The leveled creatures also were in Fallout 1+2, there were zones you couldn't go into without you getting (easily) killed, some in Fallout 3, it seems. The words 'if you're smart and lucky' in the IGN preview hints at your INT and your LUCK being important skills to use in hacking into the console, getting the password...

It is not a First Person Shooter, although you can it like this, if you want. (hey, that's just like Mass Effect...) The is played from a first person perspective, but this does not mean it is a First Person Shooter. If it were, then a game like Vampire: The Masquerade also would be a first person shooter or games like the old Might and Magic games would also be first person shooters. The game, F3, also has a third person camera view that can be pulled back (all the way apparently) so that you get a bird's eye view, zoomed out so you're able to look at everything from above.

I don't really a gripe with this: What I (still) have a gripe with and is partly disappointed about is that (silly) main quest to find your father and the whole blowing up the Megaton town questline. I now know, thanks to IGN, that I don't have to blow up Megaton. But why should I even get the choice to blow up a nuclear bomb that didn't explode?? In the old Fallout games, people treated nuclear weapons with respect, and they didn't use them to blow up towns, just
so that certain shady characters are able to develop the area.

The violence level in the game, Fallout 3, still seems a bit too much for me. Fallout was never (only) about the violence, it was about the choices you made before you did the violence - that was necessary for you to survive. In F3, it seems too, from the info, we've gotten on this, that your character just likes to blow things up -
literally...

The main quest is trivial and un-original, imo, and at best, the main quest, in F3, is a sort of rip-off of the plot in Star Wars and Baldur's Gate...
 
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The leveled creatures also were in Fallout 1+2, there were zones you couldn't go into without you getting (easily) killed
Whilst I never finished Fallout 2, I don't remember any location in Fallout 1 where I returned to it after getting more powerful and found that the creatures have leveled up to match me. Or did I just not notice?

While we're on the subject of "leveling", there is right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. Wizardry 8 obviously had a leveling mechanism, but every area had a narrow level band. There were areas where your arse would be kicked if you went in too early, and likewise there were areas that if you went into later you were too powerful for the denizens.
Oblicion overdid the leveling - everything was leveled to crap. I sure as hell hope the same doesn't happen for Fallout 3. I've been avoiding the crapstorm a little (I find it depressing) but are there any quotes defintely for or against the presence of leveling in Fallout 3?
 
There were mini games in both Fallout 1+2 as well as Van Buren. They weren't just called mini games, but I distintcly remember hacking the console by typing in some numbers in the console to get access to a Vault or a locked door or something like that in Fallout 2.

That was just a one-off puzzle. Imagine the tedium of having to go through that every time you want to hack a computer or unlock a door just so that the attention deficit console gamers have something to keep them focused.
 
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There were mini games in both Fallout 1+2 as well as Van Buren. They weren't just called mini games, but I distintcly remember hacking the console by typing in some numbers in the console to get access to a Vault or a locked door or something like that in Fallout 2.

They were based on your character skills only, you needed INT or science or luck or something like that to have a good result, they were character based, not player based,you're mixing things up. These ones are more reminiscent of the hybrid player/character minigames from System Shock/Deus Ex, in fact many things in this game remind me of Deus Ex. More than Fallout, even.

The leveled creatures also were in Fallout 1+2,

Hmmmm nope.
 
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You can read, can't you, bjon?

It seems you are the one that can't read, I asked a question to which I expected an answer, I never said it didn't say that. You might want to remember you are not in the codex where everything is written with either sarcasm, half-truths or vitriol.

I read the whole IGN preview but didn't read the other ones. It mentions "A" minigame not more than one, and I think it is more like the system shock computer hacking minigame rather than the ones in Oblivion.
 
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They were based on your character skills only, you needed INT or science or luck or something like that to have a good result, they were character based, not player based,you're mixing things up. These ones are more reminiscent of the hybrid player/character minigames from System Shock/Deus Ex, in fact many things in this game remind me of Deus Ex. More than Fallout, even.

I thought the same thing, it sounds like they should have bought the DeusEx rights. I am not entirely sad, because a DeusEx-ish Fallout is the next best thing to a true sequel to me. Still, I had expected that Bethesda would try to do a little more to stay true to the originals. I am not one who places FO on a pedestal like so many fans do, but still there is a certain focus on silly weaponry and gratuitious violence that kind of puts me off, although humour and violence are certainly part of the original fallouts. It just seems more on the "Boobies!!!" level of humor, so far. On the other hand it seems from the info so far that FO3 might be a significantly better game than Oblivion, in terms of quests, non-linearity, consequences, NPC's and dialogue - so if Bethesda probably didn't have a good influence on Fallout, Fallout may have had a good influence on Bethesda.
 
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It’s still too early to say for sure, but this is sounding good to me too.

Real-time combat is the future, and I’m happy to hear Bethesda is still experimenting with the idea, still trying to do it right. It’ll never be perfect – it’ll never have the tactical accuracy of turn-based combat and will always involve some amount of player skill – but it’s the future, and I think that’s a good thing.

Let’s remember that turn-based combat is also flawed. For starters, you’re given all the time you want to make up your mind about what you’re going to do. That’s convenient but not very challenging. Even in the original P&P games, you didn’t get that kind of time to make decisions (well, depending on who was running the game).

And turn-based means mandatory pauses, and no game benefits from being stopped. There will probably be plenty of pausing going on in FO3, but it sounds like there will at least be the potential for some good non-stop action.

I’m not surprised that Bethesda is revisiting the idea of mini-games, either. I would expect them to try to correct their mistake (like they should have done in their previous game). Mini-games won’t ever be perfect, either, I expect. But I can imagine them being fun without seriously impacting the game.

I swore I’d never trust Bethesda again after they failed to fix Oblivion to the extent I wanted. Maybe I’m just a sucker for punishment, but I still have high expectations.
 
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